Did eating meat make us smart and if we gave chimpanzees more meat would they get smart?
The only thing that would make sense from an evolutionary standpoint is that eating meat would provide more energy and reduce time spent eating and foraging than a plant based diet. Meat is assimilated easier into the body than plant material, and it has a higher calorie density. Having more energy available would allow for more to be put into the development of the brain over time. A more developed brain takes more energy to maintain, and that would act as a determent if an organism is in the wild and needs to be efficient in energy expenditures. That’s why some birds significantly reduce the song portion of their brain outside of the mating season so that they aren’t wasting energy on something they aren’t gaining enough from. Keep in mind this process acts on the order of generations in a population, you aren’t going to make one chimp smarter through evolution, but the descendants a ways down the line are the ones you would need to be looking at. Still to say that eating meat makes
